My husband and I had a big party this weekend to thank all of the contractors who helped us build our dream home. Our Seattle-based architect, Geoff Prentiss, arrived at the party with a nice couple, Chuck and Dana, who are thinking about following in our footsteps and acting as their own general contractor. I wasn’t surprised that Geoff brought them along – he didn’t say so but I’m sure he wanted them to hear how painful this project has been for us, hoping, no doubt, that they’ll change their minds and hire a professional to implement his design.
I realized yesterday that an architect’s business has something in common with many of the tech companies I’ve worked with over the years. How many great technology products fail because the customers aren’t fully prepared for the implementation?
Geoff Prentiss is a very talented business owner who knows that his success is measured by the final outcome. He doesn’t want his name on a project unless it is just right. If he accepts customers like me and my husband, or Chuck and Dana, who for reasons of personal interest or cost savings want to manage our own projects, he needs to know how to target people who will successfully implement his highly customized homes
So I started thinking about how personas could be used to identify the companies and individuals who are capable of successfully implementing a company's solutions, avoiding some of the painful (and well-publicized) disaster stories that damage the vendors’ reputations and destroy the customers’ faith in all of us. Better yet, maybe this clarity about target personas would allow us to help the buyers measure their own capacity to succeed. Perhaps buyers could recognize the need to spend more on implementation services, putting them off their plans to do things themselves if they aren’t fully prepared for the work involved.
Plus people are always asking me for examples of buyer personas. So here are my thoughts about a persona for the type of buyer who would be likely to succeed as "owner-contractor", which is construction-speak for hiring all of the workers yourself when you build or remodel a home. It doesn’t necessarily mean doing the work yourself (the preferred term for that is owner-builder), but building a house requires a lot of vendors, including plumbers, electricians, carpenters, masons, roofers, etc., and the general contractor is responsible for managing all of these sub-contractors, and is ultimately responsible for the total cost of the project.
Note that the persona I am describing is targeted for a project where the owner-contractor is building his or her own home, not for a speculative investment. We
had previously built homes for investment and, although some of the issues were
similar, the emotional commitment to the final result and the level of
customization are not typical for an investment property.
We’ll call our owner-contractor persona Janice. She’s 52 years old and has been married to her second husband for ten years. Her daughter just started college and her son recently graduated with a degree in engineering.
Janice had a 20-year career in the software industry, doing
project management and systems analysis. She isn’t sure that she’s retired yet,
but she has decided to take some time off to help with the construction of
the couple’s new home in Boulder, Colorado.
Janice’s experience in project management required her to work with a wide variety of people who have diverse levels of skill and education, which will help a lot as this new role requires her to motivate and interact with contractors from all walks of life. Because she changed jobs several times, Janice knows how to quickly learn new languages and terminology, a skill that will come in handy when she has to assimilate new construction concepts.
One of the most critical aspects of Janice’s persona is that she doesn’t easily lose her temper. This will be important when something goes wrong and each of the contractors is pointing to one of the others as the source of the problem. Janice will need to evaluate all of the options and determine the best course of action, especially when no one accepts responsibility or wants to do his part of the work over again.
This also means that Janice is able to make decisions quickly and without having perfect data – she knows how to ask good questions and is willing to make an educated guess. Janice knows that it’s important to keep the contractors working and the project moving forward. A lot of starts and stops cost money and extend the project (which are somewhat synonymous).
Janice is also very good at managing finances – her prior jobs required her to keep projects within budget, but also to find more money when necessary. Janice will need to use both skills for this project. Because there is no single contractor to promise a price, and her best plans will not anticipate some of the vendors and costs, Janice will need some financial dexterity. She needs to prepare her husband for this and keep him in the loop so that he isn't surprised.
It’s a good thing that Janice is putting her career on hold, because this house is going to run her life until it is finished. She needs to be at the job site almost every day at the beginning of the project, and during the final six-to-eight months when “finish work” is in progress, she will want to check on the contractors at 60-90 minute intervals. If Janice isn’t there to answer a question, even the best contractors can misinterpret an instruction that she thought she had communicated. No matter what, some aspects of the project will require rework if she wants it to be just right.
Fortunately, Janice is really good at networking and planning ahead, because she will need to source materials and vendors who can deliver what she needs when she needs it. Her project management skills will help her to anticipate lead times and get items delivered on time and on budget, anticipating and managing inevitable and frequent delays. Janice will need to get contractors lined up for specific dates, call them again to remind them about their commitments, and then repeat the process over and over again until the work is actually finished. The first few hours of every day will be consumed with this effort.
So yes, some of the details about this persona are characteristics that you'd find in me and my husband, but we partnered through the project and there are aspects of Janice that aren’t like us at all. This is intentional. Personas shouldn't be descriptive of any single individual. I wanted to define a fictitious person based on a composite of the qualities that an architect might assess if he wants to accept customers for owner-contractor projects. To get this persona right, I'd want to talk to more people who have been through the same experience and see if there's something that I missed or that weren't relevant in my project. Maybe you know someone who can help.
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